Books by Pat McDonald

Echoes of Doubt

Private Investigator Bart Bridges has had to enter the witness protection programme. His new identity is Cyrus Bartholomew, clock maker, in the small seaside town of Wainthorpe-on-sea.

Two years later, Cyrus has easily settled into his new life as the clock maker, one of dull routine and habit. But his serenity is challenged when his elderly neighbour, the man who runs The Art Gallery next door, is violently murdered in his bed. This makes Cyrus wonder if the murderer mistook the art shop for his clock shop, and he begins to think that his past has caught up with him. Tick tock!

Besides the old man’s murder, Cyrus has noticed some strange things happening at his own shop, things for which he doesn’t have an explanation. When he meets Jayson Vingoe, the CSI for his neighbour’s murder case, the investigator begins to realise that Cyrus isn’t quite what he seems.

When another murder occurs, revealing a widespread syndicate of drugs and human trafficking, Cyrus becomes even more nervous, having escaped similar corruption in his past life.

Getting Even: Revenge Is Best Served Cold

The murder of a local taxi driver begins a chain of events that baffles detectives. As Detective Sergeant Luc Wariner and Detective Constable Aidey Carter try to unravel an interwoven series of lies and deceit involving drugs and underage prostitution, their personal lives become more complex.

They both fall for two key witnesses whom they have vowed to protect. Discoveries about police corruption, bribery, as well as physical and sexual abuse leave both victims and villains feeling the need to get even.

However, Getting Even is not always possible. There will always be winners and losers. Joan Beddoes has waited a long time for revenge and just wants to bury her stillborn baby. Detective Chief Inspector Harry Beddoes is being fleeced of his ill-gotten gains by his young mistress. Local nightclub owner and drug dealer Toni Maola will stop at nothing to preserve his own survival. Is Detective Inspector Jacqui Foster being stalked as she tries to find her father’s killer and bring him to justice?

All these fictional characters come together in compelling fashion in the fast and furious crime novel Getting Even: Revenge Is Best Served Cold. View the Press Release

Rogue Seed

Rogue Seed is the second novel in a trilogy by British crime author Pat McDonald. The first in the series was Getting Even: Revenge is best served cold.

This book explores the potential in all of us to “go rogue.” But when a cop goes bad, going rogue could have far-reaching ramifications.

When the body of a young school girl is found by a beat officer in the farming community of Barston, authorities wonder if it could be missing student Simone Squires, who failed to arrive home from school.

Ever since DS Aidey Carter beat information out of Tommy Brentwood about a paedophile gang, Carter has been having nightmares, in which his violence is aimed at his girlfriend, Abby.

Many other strange things are happening in town. Rival gangs are vying for the drug trade, a drive-by shooter shot two young girls, an apparent suicide has everyone wondering if it really was suicide, and Officer Jacqui Foster has become the object of a stalker.

Will stability be restored by Acting Inspector Luc Wariner, who is surrounded by rogue officers, and what will he do about Aidey Carter and Jacqui Foster?

Boxed Off

Everyone is shocked by the discovery of yet another body – but this time alive – found by PC Hugo Bott, Barston’s best officer, in a field at the top of Farm Hill. Once again the Major Crime Unit is challenged as more incidents arise. DCI Jacqui Foster is reported missing, assumed kidnapped, whilst another buried body has been discovered by a young couple walking their dogs in the woods near Barston.

Detective Alun ap Prichard is devastated by Jacqui Foster’s disappearance and all he wants to do is find her. Instead, he is tasked with finding Harry Beddoes, who it is now known didn’t die by his own hand in a suicide attempt.

DI Luc Wariner finds himself at the helm of a rapidly depleted Major Crime Unit, and no one takes seriously Private Investigator Bartholomew Bridges, who seems to be the only one who has the key to unravel the complex cases. Will he tell what he knows? It’s a race against time to unravel the complex ties between the main suspects. Could there be someone, yet unknown to them, who is really responsible?

This is the third book in a crime trilogy. The first book was Getting Even: Revenge is best served cold (2013) and the second was Rogue Seed (2014). Boxed Off completes the crime investigations by the Major Crime Unit.

Breaking Free

Breaking Free is the sequel to the author’s crime novel Getting Even: Revenge Is Best Served Cold.

Livia Morrison was taken against her will, but finally breaks free. She takes all Harry’s money, sells his flat, and escapes to the United Arab Emirates, where women alone are frowned upon, so she knows she can’t stay there forever.

Three years later, Livia travels to a small community in North Wales, where she hopes she can leave her past buried and live a quiet life unnoticed. Then her problems really begin. Livia knows she is being stalked, but keeping the intruder out of her home is proving impossible.

Then the mysterious telephone calls come. Were they of an earlier era? Livia doesn’t want to remember her early life and has locked it away in the depths of her mind. But the voice on the phone is making her remember things she never realised she knew.

There are too many unanswered questions. How does the garden stay so perfect? It’s the height of summer, yet outside it’s autumn and the leaves are beginning to fall. Then she finds the seafarer’s chest in the attic …

A Penny for Them

Benjamin Matthews is the hapless hero with the innocent face of an angel and only two GCSEs in chemistry and history. At the vast age of thirty, he has not yet found his niche in life, but has drifted along performing a series of jobs that always go wrong.

Then he meets Rebecah, a nymphomaniac and the beautiful daughter of a failed politician who is one of the most successful villains in his hometown.

If lying should ever become an art form, Ben would succeed, because people believe in his honest face.

From his very first white lie (about his name being Benjamin Pollock), he digs himself in deeper and deeper, realising that it is important to be considered a Pollock.

Even he has to admit that he is rather good at this lying malarkey. Ben finds he has a talent for being a criminal, going from strength to strength, and taking Daisy Productions to new heights. But will his latest business venture follow the usual pattern and fail? Will his fabrications be the end of him?

A Penny for Them takes a humorous look at crime from the viewpoint of the criminal and is spot on.

The Penny Drops

Benjamin Matthews, née Benjamin Pollock, is a successful businessman marketing the slimming formula “The Daisy Effect.” He is preparing for a new life with his wife Rebecah and their twins, Luke and Lucy, moving from England to the United Arab Emirates, where Rebecah just got a job as a nurse.

Ben’s unfortunate white lie (that his name is Pollock) leads him to discover just as he is about to fly out of the country, that his origins are not all that they seem. The confusion over his real last name gets him stopped at the airport, whilst he watches his wife and children fly away without him.

Will Ben be able to get a new passport and prove his identity so he can fly out to join them? Or will other incidents prevent him from leaving? More to the point, can he escape Daphne, the undercover cop who is chasing him?

Ben’s continuing story is fraught with calamities and frustrations … until The Penny Drops! This second book in the Penny series offers a rollicking tale of confusion and nonstop action. It is the sequel to A Penny for Them.

A Bad Penny

A bad penny always turns up, so the saying goes.

A Bad Penny is the third book in a series by Pat McDonald. In her first book, A Penny for Them, Benjamin Matthews (nee Pollock), discovers after several startling revelations that he isn’t who he thought he was, which stops him from leaving with his wife and children for the United Arab Emirates.

Determined to join them, Ben manages to escape the clutches of Sergeant Daphne Johnson, when in book two, The Penny Drops, he sneaks out of the UK to “live the dream” in the desert country’s opulent culture.

Feeling sheer relief upon arrival, and lured by his new exotic surroundings and the mysteries of the desert, Ben sees no point in telling his wife who he really is. Believing him to be an orphan, she remains blissfully ignorant of both his families, until his two mothers show up together, complete with suitcases.

This sparks the beginning of another inevitable run of bad luck for Ben. Just when things seem to be going okay, something always turns up to spoil it! In A Bad Penny, Ben’s easy escape to United Arab Emirates is short lived, when, like a bad penny, everyone turns up!

British crime author Pat McDonald lives in a rural part of the Midlands, United Kingdom. She previously worked as a researcher, project manager, and programme manager in the NHS, and in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. She is now a full-time novelist.

Pat McDonald has lived her entire life in Nottinghamshire, England. She previously worked in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. “The theme and the title Rogue Seed came out of a strange plant that grew from a packet of chili seeds! It opened up a whole gamut of ideas related to something growing where it shouldn’t, and this combined with the concept of a police officer ‘going rogue,’ produced the book.”